Saru Jayaraman is the co-founder and President of One Fair Wage. After 9/11, together with displaced World Trade Center workers, she co-founded the Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC), which grew into a national movement of restaurant workers, employers and consumers. She then launched One Fair Wage as a national campaign to end all subminimum wages in the United States.
Saru is a graduate of Yale Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. She was listed in CNN’s “Top10 Visionary Women” and recognized as a Champion of Change by the White House in 2014, a James Beard Foundation Leadership Award in 2015, and the SF Chronicle ‘Visionary of the Year’ in 2019. Saru is also the author of four books including One Fair Wage: Ending All Subminimum Pay in America (The New Press, November 2021). Additional publications include Behind the Kitchen Door (Cornell University Press, 2013), Forked: A New Standard for American Dining (Oxford University Press, 2016), and Bite Back: People Taking on Corporate Food and Winning, (UC Press, 2020). She has appeared on MSNBC, HBO, PBS, CBS, and CNN. She attended the Golden Globes in 2018 with Amy Poehler as part of an action to address sexual harassment.
About One Fair Wage
One Fair Wage is a national organization in the United States that organizes restaurant workers and ‘high road’ restaurant owners to raise wages and end all subminimum wages nationwide. Over the last year, One Fair Wage has co-led the launch of a new Living Wage for All campaign with hundreds of labor, community, and civil rights organizations. The Living Wage for All movement is leading bills and ballot measures for $25 and $30 with no exceptions in various states and cities and at the federal level in Congress.
Saru’s Activate 2026 Plenary: Campaigning for a Living Wage: Getting the $25 for All bill to Congress
Over the last year, over 100 worker organizations, unions, and civil rights organizations across the United States have come together to launch the Living Wage for All campaign, to advance state, local and federal campaigns across the country that are raising the minimum wage closer to the actual cost of living ($25, $27, and $30) and end all subminimum wages that are legacies of slavery. Hear from Saru Jayaraman, co-founder and President of One Fair Wage and the co-founder of the national Living Wage for All campaign, as she explains how the campaign seeks to directly address the United States’ twin related crises of affordability and democracy.